Nienke Sybrandy – a portrait

Studio Nienke Sybrandy was present at the Milan Design Week in Lambrate. Missed it? Her work was published on the front cover of Connecting the Dots.

Why did you set up your practice?
It just happened – I came from art school and happened to have a graduation project that sold, so I kept going. I never made a business plan, it just grew.

Where does your inspiration come from?
Always daily life: the things you see and hear, and wonder about.

Nienke Sybrandy

Like flowers?
I am fascinated by the phenomenon: you have this flower, you bring it for dinner, birthdays, funerals… It symbolizes all the things you can’t say and those moments you celebrate. I work with this symbolism, but I also really work the material itself – flowers – in the same way that people work with wood to make a table. Its my muse and my material.

What characterizes your work? Is there an opinion or feeling that links your work on flowers to, say, your series on bubbles?Yes… I was doing the dishes one day, and suddenly a bubble came out of the soap and I had this isolated moment. You look at something and suddenly you see it: how temporary everything is. All of my work deals with decay, and temporariness.

Starting with this moment, how did a series of products develop?
It began with a spoon, three years ago. You use it to stir your coffee and when you do the dishes you can blow soap bubbles with it. Last year I made a series of white tableware decorated with a soap bubble print directly on the porcelain. The plates are decorated on the spot – you witness it happening. When a bubble bursts, there is this beautiful splash: the tableware captures the moment.

What is your next project?
I’m going to do a residency. Starting a research on transiency in ‘time’ on ceramics and thus develop another way of decorating.